Turkey season in Ohio starts this month and if i get one im wanting to get the fan mount cuz i cant afford the full mount this year lol. But i was wondering if you all do your own how do you do it? What are the steps to actualy doing it?
cut it off at the base (feel around with your fingers at the base of the tail and gather all the desired feathers, it will cut of easily) remove any large chunks of meat sprinkle the flesh that is left with borax spread the fan completely open and lay it on some newspaper using magazines or phonebooks across the fan to hold it open and in place
here is my bird from last year that I finally got around to doing http://forums.bowhunting.com/turkey-hunting/59982-last-years-bird.html
Or the cape...for something different. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x8qDgGi8oQ8 I also believe some folks use salt to dry, but I'm thinking the borax benefit is it is dying but also keeping critters/bugs away. The only other 'trick' other than the fleshing and borax/salt is with the feet. You can drill out a lot of meat using a hand held electric drill and then work some salt/borax down into the bore holes. Bend the foot before drying in the shape you want.
Ive been watchin youtube vids on it, it doesnt seem to hard just the fan part gett wing it set. So the guy on youtube said what tacklebox did cut the base and he had cardboard box and he broke it down and pinned all the feathers to it, and said it let it dry for 21 days. So i guess when i start ill find the base cut the base and get all the back feathers off the fan and hust get rid of them and try my best to get all the flesh off the base. Then put salt on the base. Then spread the fan out 180 degrees and pin it all down and let it dry. Then for beard just put back the feathers and cut thru the skin and salt that and cut the legs off and salt them. Seems easy enough. Did i miss anything and my question is s he right about how long to let it dry. Just wanna make sure.
Wings are a bit more complicated, there are a couple of ways you can approach them since there is no real direct way to borax / salt the majority of the flesh. Many taxi's would split the skin on the inside and remove as much flesh from around the bone as possible then allow to dry. Once dry they apply bondo or similar substance to replace the wing muscle, then pull the skin back into place. Option 2 and the route I used was to freeze dry the wings (this takes far more time unless you have a freezer really set up for it) Once the wings are ALMOST completely freeze dried I applied a small amout of borax to any exposed flesh and spread the wings/set the feathers. Wings will take over a month to set and even then the main wing joint can be a real pain, or may never fully set. This is where some wire and a long thin very flexible drill bit comes in... lol Run the bit through the joint in a way that you can feed a wire that is just stiff enough to keep shape, and wallah
